The Defense Attorney User Guide

The AI does the homework. You make the decisions.

Adjudica is an AI-assisted case-work platform for California Workers' Compensation. This guide describes configured defense-side document, form, drafting, case-question, and lien-workflow surfaces. Source links may be available, but outputs can be incomplete or wrong and require attorney verification. Runtime availability was not observed for this release.

What Adjudica Does for Defense Firms

Adjudica is positioned as a case-work platform for defense practices, with configured assistance for medical-record review, routine correspondence, forms, and activity context. Availability and resulting time, capacity, billing, or ALAE effects are firm-specific and were not measured for this release.

For lien defense specifically, Adjudica screens liens, values them against the fee schedule, recommends a settle-or-litigate posture, and helps generate the carrier reports and reduction letters that move a lien book toward disposition.

The attorney remains responsible. The AI proposes; you review, correct, and decide. A recommended posture is an unverified starting point, not a directive. Confirm that enabled approval and filing workflows enforce firm-required sign-off.

Source-linked review. Some workflows provide document links, confidence context, or activity attribution. Coverage and accuracy vary. These records do not establish billability or audit acceptance; verify the answer, source record, and activity history.

Security and PHI. Source configuration describes encryption, tenant scoping, and fail-closed provider routing. These are configured-enabled facts, not observed-live control or contract verification. Confirm the customer-specific BAA, provider terms, enabled route, and runtime controls before PHI use; direct/public OpenAI is prohibited for PHI.

Quick Reference

Hover over any sidebar item for a tooltip explaining what it does.

Logging In & Navigation

Source configuration describes email/password sign-in, invitations, firm setup, team invitations, email verification, and a BAA-acknowledgement workflow. Confirm current environment availability and executed terms before PHI use.

The left sidebar is your home base, and it adapts to your role, showing only the surfaces your permissions allow: Home, Mailroom, Documents, Drafts, Timeline, Matters, Templates, Workflows, Tools, and Settings (Admin only). Your profile lives at the bottom.

Your Defense Home

Log in as a defense attorney or admin and Adjudica takes you to the Defense Home, a lien-desk triage view you read top to bottom.

• Four KPI tiles are your vital signs: Total Exposure (realistic exposure across valued liens, net of payments, and it turns red when it is above zero), Total Liens (the firm-wide count on the desk), Unscreened (liens that still need a first-pass posture decision, in amber when above zero), and Realistic Reserve (valued exposure net of payments).
• Newest Liens shows what just landed, each row with the claimant, lien type, WCAB case number, and the amount in play. Treatment dates are Protected Health Information and are deliberately never shown here.
• Recent Activity is designed to show selected activity and AI-or-human attribution where recorded. Coverage and accuracy were not observed across runtime paths.
• Posture Breakdown shows the shape of your lien book by recommended posture: pay at schedule, negotiate, or litigate.

The Defense Home is your dashboard inside Adjudica. To work an individual lien end to end, use the Open Lien Desk action in the header to reach the full lien-management surface at lien.adjudica.ai.

The Lien-Defense Workflow

Source UI includes defense metrics and a Lien Desk workflow. Selected steps may carry AI-or-human attribution; sequence completeness, legal defensibility, and log coverage require firm verification.

• Intake. Liens land on the desk as they are filed against the firm's matters, with the claimant, type, WCAB case number, and amounts. Lien types include medical provider, med-legal, EDD or SDI, attorney fee, interpreter, copy service, SIBTF, and costs.
• Clearance and screening. Configured assistance may propose provider, assignment, fee, limitation, or medical-standing issues from available inputs. It can miss facts or misapply rules; counsel performs the legal analysis.
• Valuation. Configured assistance may compare available lien inputs with selected fee-schedule data and propose a working value. Data coverage, calculations, payments, and reserves require independent verification.
• Posture. A configured workflow may propose a settle-versus-litigate posture and rationale from available inputs. It can omit facts, misapply rules, or produce an unsuitable recommendation; counsel independently analyzes and decides.
• Negotiation and generation. Track offers and counteroffers, and generate the defense work product (carrier reports, conference packets, and reduction letters) grounded in the lien record.

Adjudica can propose legal-analysis assistance for selected defense workflows. Coverage is not guaranteed. The AI proposes; licensed counsel independently reviews and decides.

Matters

A matter is a case. Open one and you get a single workspace for everything about it: parties, injury and insurance details, documents, drafts, the case chat, the timeline, and the knowledge graph. Create a matter from Matters, "New Matter", or drop in the pleadings and let the AI read the documents and stand up the matter pre-filled. The list is searchable and filterable by name, case number, employer, assigned attorney, status, and date range.

Moving onto Adjudica from MerusCase? The integration is a one-way migration bridge: connect your MerusCase account during onboarding and Adjudica imports your existing cases and their documents, so the practice runs on Adjudica rather than alongside a legacy tool.

Mailroom & Documents

Source configuration routes uploaded documents through the Mailroom, with Needs Review, Exceptions, and Cleared states. Supported formats and limits depend on the enabled environment. Status detail may be incomplete, and runtime processing behavior was not observed for this release.

Source UI describes a searchable Documents library and side-by-side OCR review with legibility-oriented confidence cues. Coverage across matters, review enforcement, citation completeness, and processing of large files were not observed; attorneys inspect the complete source record.

Drafts

Three paths, one goal: get your documents done faster without sacrificing accuracy. Court Form drafts let you pick a DWC form and have the AI fill it from your case documents. Template drafts fill a firm template with the matter's case data. Custom drafts generate a one-off document from a plain-language description.

Court form filling can reduce manual entry: open your matter, create a Court Form draft, pick a form, and click "Re-fill Form With AI." The configured Anthropic route proposes entries where it finds sufficient evidence; uncertain or unsupported fields require manual completion. Available source links support attorney verification. Direct/public OpenAI routing is prohibited for PHI, while approved fail-closed Azure OpenAI chat routing is a distinct path.

Your firm's recurring defense work product makes natural templates: defense counsel letters, trial briefs, MSC statements, and case-analysis memos. Note that lien-specific work product (carrier reports, conference packets, and reduction letters) is generated from the Lien Desk, where it draws on the structured lien record rather than a free-form matter draft.

Source configuration describes one editor with auto-save, selected-text refinement, PDF preview, and PDF or Word export. Before filing, download and inspect the rendered output and obtain a licensed California attorney's review and approval. Confirm the enabled workflow behaves as required.

Timeline & Case Chat

Source configuration describes a proposed Timeline with Legal, Medical, Insurance, and Communication categories, source links where available, and manual editing. It may omit, duplicate, or misorder events and links. Counsel verifies chronology and exposure analysis against the complete record and calendar.

Case Chat is configured to answer plain-English questions about processed files and may include source links. It can omit or misstate facts and does not provide legal advice. Confirm current session behavior and verify answers against the complete record.

Case Intelligence

Source configuration describes a knowledge graph that may map extracted entities and relationships, with review and confidence context where available. It may omit, duplicate, or misstate information, fail to identify conflicts, or lack complete attribution. Counsel verifies the graph against the source record.

Templates & Workflows

Source configuration describes reusable Templates and Workflows with triggers, actions, placeholders, and human-review states. Runtime execution, source coverage, field accuracy, failure behavior, and review enforcement were not observed. Test configured workflows, monitor them, and retain licensed review.

Administration & Security

Firm administration is visible only to the Admin role. Admins edit firm details, invite team members and assign each a single role, and manage integrations. Capabilities are membership-driven and enforced across the whole app:

Source configuration includes per-matter restrictions and role-dependent access. This release did not test runtime enforcement or establish a complete data-isolation boundary; verify tenant and matter access in the enabled environment. Keep profile data current and use two-factor authentication where required by firm policy and configuration.

When to Override the AI

The AI is a tool, not an authority. Always override its suggestions, including posture recommendations, when you have information the AI does not (conversations with the adjuster, privileged strategy, terms discussed off the record); when the case has unusual facts a pattern-matcher can get technically-sourced-but-strategically-wrong; when a citation does not support the answer; and when your defense strategy requires framing the facts differently. When in doubt, your professional judgment always wins. The AI does not have a law license. You do. Trust the AI to find information, and trust yourself to interpret it.

Support

Source-listed support hours are Monday to Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM Pacific. Current staffing and security-monitoring coverage were not independently observed. Representing injured workers instead? See the Applicant Attorney User Guide.

The AI does the homework. You make the decisions. That is how it should be.